Transcript Kaplan`s Styles of Thinking

Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct
of Inquiry (San Francisco:
Chandler, 1964), pp. 258-262.
The fashion in question concerns one of the
dimensions of cognitive style--roughly speaking,
the use which is made of formal logic and
mathematics. Note that this is a question of the
style of thought, not merely of the style of
presentation: Plato and Galileo both wrote
dialogues, but with very different cognitive
styles. Yet thought and its expression are surely
not wholly unrelated to one another, and how
scientific findings are formulated for
incorporation into the body of knowledge often
reflects stylistic traits of the thinking behind
them. . . .
Theories Reflect Kaplan's
Levels of Thinking
• Literary
• Analytic is the logical
• Academic
character of scientific
statements
• Synthetic is the
empirical character of
scientific statements
• Eristic
• Symbolic
– Postulational
– Formal
The literary style. This cognitive style is likely to be
occupied with individuals, particular sets or sets of
events, case studies, clinical findings, and the like. A plot
is unfolded--a behavior sequence is disclosed to have a
certain significance. . . . A person, a movement, or a
whole culture is interpreted in terms of the specific
purposes of the actors, rather than in terms of the
abstract and general theories of the scientist's own
explanatory scheme.
Examples: Kenneth Burke, Sigmund Freud,
Marshall McLuhan, Lester Thonssen & A. Craig
Baird
The academic style. This is much more abstract and
general than the literary style. There is some attempt to be
precise, but it is verbal rather than operational. Ordinary
words are used in special senses, to constitute a special
vocabulary. . . . The materials dealt with tend to be ideational
rather than observational data, and their treatment tends to
be highly theoretical, if not, indeed, purely speculative.
System is introduced by way of great "principles", applied
over and over to specific cases, which illustrate the
generalization rather than serve as proofs of it. . . .
Examples: Hugh Duncan, some of Burke,
some of Leon Festinger, John Stewart, Irving Janis,
Jack Gibb
The eristic style. Here there is a strong interest in
proof, and of specific propositions, rather than, as in
the literary and academic styles, the aim only of
exhibiting the cognitive possibilities in certain broad
perspectives on the subject-matter. Experimental and
statistical data become important.
Examples: Gerald Miller, Martin Fishbein,
Robert F. Bales, James McCroskey
The symbolic style. The subject-matter is
conceptualized from the outset in mathematical terms. Both
problems and solutions are formulated, therefore, in a more
or less artificial language. . . . Measurement is important, as
providing the content for the mathematical forms which are
employed. Statistical data do not serve, as in the eristic
style, only as a body of evidence; they are processed so as
to generate new hypotheses, and even new patterns of
conceptualization. In this processing, computers and other
instruments, both physical and ideational, are likely to play a
major role. The symbolic style is characteristic of
mathematical economics, psychometrics and sociometrics,
game-theoretic treatments of political problems, probabilistic
approaches to learning theory, and so on.
Examples: Milton Rokeach game-theoretic models,
John Thibaut & Harold Kelley
The postulational style. This has many of the
characteristics of the symbolic style, of which, indeed, it
could be regarded as a special variant. It differs from
the symbolic style in general only as logic differs from
mathematics. The validity of proof is at the focus of
attention here, rather than the content of the
propositions which occur at the various steps.
Emphasis is on the system as a whole, bound together
by the chains of logical derivation.
Synthetic elements but emphasizing analytic
properties.
Examples: Claude Shannon,
Charles Osgood (congruity hypothesis)
The formal style. This is very close to the
postulational style, and indeed, presupposes the latter.
The difference is that here the key terms are not given
any interpretation; there is no reference to any specific
empirical content. Pure analytic.
Examples: geometry, algebra, calculus, statistics
Kaplan’s Styles of Thinking
Formal
Postulational
Math—No empirical loadings
Empirical loadings
Eristic theories
Academic theories
Literary theories
Increasing Synthetic Rigor
Kaplan’s Styles of Thinking
Formal
Postulational
Math—No empirical loadings
Empirical loadings
Eristic theories
Academic theories
Literary theories
Increasing Synthetic Rigor